(This issue was briefly discussed in the moderator forum but I think it really belongs here. Below the line is my original post for reference's sake.)

This thread should be used to correct improper capitalization found on the site. But first, we should establish some capitalization guidelines. We already have guidelines for English capitalization from Wikipedia, but what about other languages? And what should be prioritized; how the bands print their titles, or how the rules of grammar work in that language?

Here are my suggestions, but they are open for debate:

If the band prints their album and/or song titles all in caps on their cover art and inserts, or all in lowercase, ignore this and use the language's grammar rules of capitalization;

If the band uses otherwise "improper" capitalization (perhaps due to ignorance, or simply for aesthetical reasons, such as Fiers et Victorieux here -- proper French capitalization would be "Fiers et victorieux"), leave it as is. (Some mods disagree with me on this, and think proper grammar should always be used regardless of how bands print their titles, so feel free to debate this point.)

German: (Azmodes:) I figured since you practically need some (and preferably above average) language skills in German to thoroughly check and correct capitalisation, linking to an English resource for people not speaking it is rather pointless if you don't plan on learning it anyway (still, no harm linking RYM's take on it, it's far from being exhaustive, though). So for those who know it, as a rule, we go by the Duden, which also applies to titles of any kind (and the first word is always capitalised).

Several songs and albums (mainly those by Norwegian bands) are incorrectly capitalized on your website. For example the album Det som engang var by Burzum: On Encylopaedia Metallum, it is listed as Det Som Engang Var. Or the track "Over fjell og gjennom torner" off Darkthone's Transilvanian Hunger album, listed as "Over Fjell Og Gjennom Torner." In correct Norwegian, only the first word should be capitalized, as well as any proper nouns, etc. I've noticed this with Italian-language songs as well, such as track 3 off My Dying Bride's album The Dreadful Hours "Le figlie della tempesta," which is written "Le Figlie Della Tempesta." Encylopaedia Metallum strives to be as accurate as possible, and correcting these imperfections would greatly help out the site.Sly93, user

I think he has a good point. We shouldn't use English capitalisation rules for non-English titles. I know that in French, we don't capitalize every word either and as far as I know this is reflected on the site, at least usually. Why not Italian, Norwegian and everything else too?

_________________

Von Cichlid wrote:

I work with plenty of Oriental and Indian persons and we get along pretty good, and some females as well.

Markeri, in 2013 wrote:

a fairly agreed upon date [of the beginning of metal] is 1969. Metal is almost 25 years old

I looked up the capitalization rules and worked very carefully at copying the information from the submission to that page (almost everything was capitalized), but I still do not think I did it 100% correctly

I try to fix German titles, which are tricky because of our needlessly complex capitalisation system, as well as Spanish ones when I see them. Capitalisation rules of the respective languages should of course be consistently reflected on the site, but cleaning up the current "mess" will be a mammoth project. It's a fuzzy, chaotic issue, and most users are not aware of any fixed rules, I suspect.

I always wondered about this myself. I always assumed that was meant to be some weird exception to the rule, because if albums as famous as Burzum's were capitalised incorrectly on MA, somebody would've corrected it by now.

I always wondered about this myself. I always assumed that was meant to be some weird exception to the rule, because if albums as famous as Burzum's were capitalised incorrectly on MA, somebody would've corrected it by now.

It's more of a case of no one really caring or knowing it to be an issue at all. I don't think this was ever really discussed here before.

The only exception is band names. They generally should be capitalized like everything else, but a common practice is to capitalize the first letter of every word. Though, the best practice is to check how the band itself capitalizes the name and use that.

With album and song titles, titles written in "all lowercase", "ALL UPPERCASE" or "First Letter In Every Word" (or "First Letter in Every Word Except Small Words") are probably just written/printed that way without paying attention or assigning any special significance to the capitalization (for some reason some Finns seem to use the English capitalization rules), so these should be corrected according to the basic rule (First word and proper nouns). If capitalization of a song title seems to differ from the other titles of the album and/or there are cases like "CaPital and lowercase LetTers at apParently RanDom Places" it's probably intentional and the way the band capitalizes should be used. I'd count only these cases as "improper" capitalization as described in the first post, because in the 3 (or 4) cases I presented in earlier in this paragraph the capitalization isn't most likely meaningful in any way. Imo capitalizing Finnish like "Every Word Capitalized" is equivalent to capitalizing words like "a", "in", "of" and "the" in English.

Then there are cases which may be proper nouns depending on context, for example Moonsorrow's "Aurinko ja kuu". Just as in English "Aurinko" means the Sun (as in the name of the star closest to us), but "aurinko" means a sun (as in a star, especially in context of a solar system). Similarly, "Kuu" means the Moon (as in Earth's moon), but "kuu" means a moon (as in a celestial body orbiting a planet). The band actually seems to write the name as "Aurinko ja kuu" instead of "Aurinko ja Kuu" which would change the meaning from "The Sun and the Moon" to "Sun and Moon". However, I think they just haven't paid attention to the exact capitalization and its meaning because the official translation of the title is "The Sun and the Moon". Then again, in the official translation of the lyrics it's "The sun and the moon/Lit so far from where (etc)" which could mean they just didn't bother to capitalize them there, or they mean some other sun and moon, simply referred to with a definite article (the). But since the band's lyrical themes aren't exactly astronomical I'd assume they mean the Sun and the Moon. And since they don't seem to pay much attention to the capitalization ("Nälkä, väsymys ja epätoivo" vs. "Kuolleiden Maa" and "All Words Capitalized" practice of V: Hävitetty vs. "First word capitalized" practice of the first three albums) I'd capitalize the title as they (seem to) mean it - "Aurinko ja Kuu".

Additionally, considering that titles are written like a normal sentence, the first word after characters ".", "?" and "!" should be capitalized. Generally, no special capitalization is used with parentheses, however capitalization of the first word in the parentheses is sometimes used if the part of the title in the parentheses isn't directly connected to the other part, and the title wouldn't make any sense as a whole if the parentheses were removed - ie., the title is made of two clearly separate parts (often title and subtitle). Same with cases where dashes are used as similar punctuation (" - ", with spaces before and after), and practically all uses of colon (":"). Examples include common compilation/live album naming schemes like "Catch the Rainbow - The Anthology", "The Best: The Ultimate in Heavy Metal" and "Raid the Country Star (Live in Padova, Italy 3/18/09)" (same idea applies in Finnish).

(My main sources are RYM and Jukka Korpela's guide on modern Finnish grammar, chapters 4.4 and 6.2. I didn't find explicit answers to all of the cases of the last paragraph so some of them are more or less sophisticated guesses based on widespread practices)

So should I report improper capitalization on any albums/songs I encounter or should I wait for the mods to further agree upon factoring in the artist-in-question's preferred capitalization? For the most part, artists generally correctly capitalize the words in their songs/albums, except for the occasional incorrect capitalization of prepositions (well, at least in the English language). From my experience many of the mistakes occur due to the error of the record labels, who especially in the case of worldwide, large labels, aren't familiar with correct language capitalization rules, and capitalize songs, etc., by their English equivalents (pretty much every word in a title except for prepositions). My opinions are that in cases where the letters of a song, for example, are written in a combination of upper- and lowercase, then that should be the correct capitalization for that particular song, as they are more than likely intentional. In cases where all the letters of a title are in upper- or lowercase only, then correct written capitalization rules (for that particular language) should be used. Regardless, lyrics, etc., are a form of prose, and, thus, have no correct form, as with any form of poetry, save for haiku and the like.

I would just like to see everything as-perfect as can be here on MA, and would like to do my best to help, which in this case is improper capitalization of foreign-language titles.

You can report them, sure. Although given the prevalence of incorrect capitalisation in the database at this point it might be better to collect everything you find and make a post here. Whether or not some of those are special, intentional cases where the capitalisation should be preserved can then be dealt with case-by-case. 95% of all instances are probably just sloppy formatting, though.

Alright, so far I have reported all the Burzum mistakes, except for the following albums which are written in Old Norse, which is a bit different from Norwegian, and I don't know the rules, so... any takers?

For Danish, Norwegian, and Swedish, the only rules I could find regarding capitalization are proper nouns and the first word of a title. This leaves me to wonder about words enclosed within parentheses, as well as words following hyphens; from what I gathered, they are not to be capitalized. I suppose they aren't considered independent enough (or whatever the correct word would be to describe this) to deserve capitalization. As an example for each of my concerns: the Dimmu Borgir track "Guds fortapelse - åpenbaring av dommedag" (from Stormblåst) and the Arcturus track "Naar kulda tar (frostnettenes prolog)" (from Aspera Hiems Symfonia). Are they correctly capitalized in this manner?

How should we capitalize Latin? Pretty much the only information I could find is on MusicBrainz and they say to capitalize Latin titles in the same manner as they are presented on the booklet, etc., or, in cases such as all-caps, to use the same rules as Italian.

I don't have the clearance to fix these, but from what I understand, titles in Russian only have the first word capitalized (the same might apply for Ukrainian, but I can't find anything on it). I figured posting here would be better than making a report on all of this, as to not spam them and because I'm not 100% sure I'd be correct, but they very well could be.

_________________last.fm - Feel free to add, just let me know who you are first

Last edited by MorbidEngel on Sat Nov 24, 2012 10:24 am, edited 1 time in total.

How should we capitalize Latin? Pretty much the only information I could find is on MusicBrainz and they say to capitalize Latin titles in the same manner as they are presented on the booklet, etc., or, in cases such as all-caps, to use the same rules as Italian.

I have no idea, to be honest, but I'd lean towards not capitalizing anything except the first word and proper nouns and sticking with that approach.

I have no idea, to be honest, but I'd lean towards not capitalizing anything except the first word and proper nouns and sticking with that approach.

That would even include Mayhem's De Mysteriis Dom Sathanas ... De mysteriis dom Sathanas ... If we capitalize it as such, this would probably be the only site on the entire Web to be do so. Dare to be different? But, alright, I'll go with Italian's rules.